wh40khomebrewfandomcom-20200215-history
Warhammer 40,000 Homebrew Wiki:How to Create a Homebrew Xenos Species
This is a guide for those who wish to create their own Homebrew Xenos Species. When creating your own unique and one-of-kind alien species you want to ensure you are creating a xenos race that both compliments and exists within the established canon Warhammer 40,000 universe. The challenge, of course, is to make an alien race that does not clash with established canon, as it's easy to be very sci-fi and over-the-top, technology-wise, but you want to show the ways in which a new race can be created to enrich the overall 40k setting rather than detracting from it. General Information Alien races in the established canon of the Warhammer 40,000 universe are treated as..well, alien. Mankind had made non-aggression pacts with a number of alien races during the Age of Technology, but when human civilization fell apart during the Age of Strife, many of these aliens turned on human worlds and attacked them for plunder or simple destruction. A fundamental tenet of the Emperor's rise to power was the superiority of humans to all things alien. In the time since his interment in the Golden Throne, this has become a fundamental part of the Imperial Creed, albeit exaggerated from the Emperor's own views. A level of xenophobia which ranges from suspicion to virulent and violent hatred is cultivated in all parts of the Imperium, and "Fear the alien" and "Suffer not the alien to live" are common themes and catchphrases. The Inquisition's Ordo Xenos was specifically created to study alien races to discover weaknesses the Imperium can take advantage of, and works to crush or subvert alien influence on Imperial worlds or worlds the Imperium would like to control. They also work with the Deathwatch, a specialized division of the Space Marines consisting of Marines from many different chapters who have shown particular skill in fighting aliens. Despite this bias, temporary alliances or truces with various xenos factions do happen on rare occasions, especially when dealing with common enemies or when Inquisitors deem them necessary to further their plans. There are a very small number of xenos races, such as the Jokaero, who have actually been embraced by the Imperium for various reasons, mostly their lack of sentience. Possessing xenos weapons and/or artifacts would most likely mean a messy end for any normal Imperial citizen if discovered, but Rogue Traders can freely handle and deal with them as long as their overall goal is in the Imperium's favor. Some Inquisitors, especially in the Ordo Xenos, also use xenos items, but this is often frowned upon by more Puritanical Inquisitors and the Ordo Hereticus. In keeping with this general theme, very few stories from the Black Library have been told from an alien perspective. A trilogy of Craftworld Eldar-centered books concluded in late 2012, and a trilogy of Dark Eldar-centered books concluded in 2014. The short story collection Fear the Alien contains two stories which feature sections from the points of view of an Ork warboss and an Eldar Harlequin as well. The video game Fire Warrior and its novelization follow the adventures of a T'au Fire Warrior. In addition, the sixth and seventh edition of the game's basic rulebook featured various ways for Imperial and xenos races to team up in combat, although these came with their own conditions and drawbacks. Bizarre Alien Biology This applies to all alien races; even the humanoid Aeldari have different biology, including blood that crystallizes instead of scabbing. The Tyranids go above and beyond, as all their technology is organic. An important part of your xenos species is going to be their bodies. What are their physical traits? What do they Look like? these are things that you are going to have to figure out. This is also where you figure out your Species' attributes. For instance, are they strong, fast, or smart, these must be taken into account. If you really want to get detailed you can describe their anatomy in detail, describing organs and their functions. Life is a diverse thing even on earth, and the galaxy can only be more so. Be creative, and if you need inspiration it might help to look at the anatomy of real world animals. Unique Traits An important part of you species is going to be unique traits that they possess. For instance the Kroot's ability to assimilate genetic traits by ingesting other lifeforms, or the the psychic energy field given off by all Orks subconsciously. These kinds of things can define your race, even being incorporated into their culture, technology and the way they fight. Psykers An important thing to keep in mind is your species relation to the Warp. The Warp plays a big part in the 40k galaxy and where your race stands in relation to it is important. Are your race psychically dull like the T'au, or do they have a strong connection to the Warp like the Aeldari? Keep in mind that simply because a race has a greater affinity to the Warp than another race does not mean that individual Psykers cannot compete. Also where do psyker's stand in your species' society? Are they treated with fear and mistrust like in the Imperium, or are they revered and treated with respect like the Aeldari. All of these questions are important. Society The society of your xenos race is another important thing to consider. They could be a society ruled by a tyrannical overlord. They could be fractured, gathering in groups of clans or tribes. Furthermore, take into account their culture. They could be warlike or peaceful. They might have an isolationist policy. Be sure to include what norms these xenos value. Things such as honour, compassion, ruthlessness or intellectualism could be prized traits within your xenos' society. Factions Unless your xenos are truly all of one mind there is room for there to be certain factions within their society. Perhaps there is a group that is not satisfied with the status quo of your race. Also, warriors could be divided down into their own factions. The warriors of your race might conduct themselves the same way that the Space Marines do. keep these in mind when you are writing about your xenos. Religion Most xenos, like the majority of races in the galaxy, will have some form of religion - whether it be the reverence of an aware being akin to the worship of the God-Emperor, beliefs in a pantheon of gods (not necessarily the Chaos God) or something else entirely (as in the T'au's dogmatic belief in the Greater Good). Your xenos species probably has something which they either believe in and/or devote their lives to. Even less intelligent races will hold these beliefs, such as the Orks with Gork 'n' Mork, and highly evolved races, such as the Aeldari with their pantheon of gods. So it is important that you keep in mind religion when creating your xenos, as religion can be what shapes or defines a race's modus operandi. Characters Unless your race does not have individuals like the Tyranids, they are probably going to have a few characters. These characters might be paragons who embody the values your race holds dear, or renegades who go against the grain. They might not even be that famous in the Galaxy. Most users will tell you that making an overpowered, 'Mary-Sue', almost godlike Character is both tacky, annoying and uncool. It is just a way of bragging after all. However, it is acceptable to have one or two serious heavy hitters. These characters will be the ones who set the standard for the other heroes of your race. If you make a character who is as mighty as a Primarch, then you should explain exactly why it is that no-one in canon has ever heard of him. However it is highly recommended that you don't make a character as powerful as a Primarch for a number of reasons including that it comes awfully close to bragging, that it might be non canon friendly and that a VERY well written explanation and background of said character is required. Technology The next thing to consider is the level of scientific advancement that your xenos possess. They could be very advanced like the Aeldari or T'au. They could also be at a level superior to the Imperium. Perhaps your Xenos use unique technology not employed by other races. Also, do not fret about making your species too advanced. It is perfectly fine to make primitive Xenos. Technology does not necessarily ensure supremacy, the Orks are a testament to that. Military Forces An important aspect of any race is the strength and power of its military forces. How is it organized? Are your Xenos a very militant race. What are their warriors like? You should also think about how strong you want your Xenos to be as a race. It is doubtful that your Xenos are going to be a powerful as the Imperium or as widespread as the Orks. That being said you will want to think about how your xenos should stack up to the armed forces of other races. Weaponry While not a critically important issue, standard weaponry is something that bears mentioning. Many people become engrossed with the equipment of their special characters. We all want these characters to have cool and unique weapons and armor. However, when making your race thinking about what kind of weapons their rank and file soldiers will have is important. It is perfectly fine if your Xenos use already existing technology like Lasguns or plasma weapon. However, having their own unique standard weapons adds something, giving your race a calling card. After all it would be nice for an Imperial commander to arrive on a raided world and be able to say "Yes, it's definitely them. Look at the damage to the bodies." Relations Due to the Imperium's xenophobia and the attitudes most aliens have toward humans, cooperation between humans and alien races tends to be strained at best and generally only occurs when a greater threat forces the two sides to work together. Rogue Traders and radical Inquisitors will often have better relations with aliens, making frequent use of xenos private military contractors. How does your xenos get along with the rest of the galaxy? Do they look at other species as dangerous and untrustworthy like the Imperium does? They could also preach coexistence and unity like the Tau do. Who knows, maybe your xenos are part of the T'au Empire or are old allies to the Aeldari. They might be friends with Heretic Astartes due to worshipping Chaos themselves. On a side note, there is no relationship with Necrons or Tyranids that is not hostile, and Orks make unreliable allies. Perhaps your xenos race live an isolationist life seeking to peacefully live without violence, fighting only when their hands have been forced. Conversely your xenos may be aggressive and make many enemies. One thing is for sure there are alot of people in the Galaxy to make friends or enemies with and your xenos can't stay uninvolved forever. You should also mention that your unique xenos race was NOT wiped out during the Imperium's Great Crusade. Humans Through Alien Eyes Humans in general, are not well-liked by the majority of the xenos species that inhabit the galaxy. Despite the fact that several major races are all humanoid in appearance (Aeldari, Orks, T'au and Necrons), of these, Aeldari and Orks were both created by the Old Ones (as were humanity's ancestors), while the Necrons were intentionally styled after humanoid skeletons to put the fear of death in the younger races. Humans are mon-keigh to the Aeldari, Gue'la or Gue'vesa to the T'au, umiez'' or 'oomiez to the Orks, and the living to the Necrons. We're not sure what the Tyranids call humans, but many think it's something along the lines of "tasty". *'''Aeldari - The Aeldari, naturally, find mon-keigh to be (at best) brutish and ignorant barbarians blundering their way through the Aeldari's birthright, and at worst as little better than vermin. *'Drukhari' - To the Drukhari, humans are basically livestock. *'Orks' - Orks find humans to be entertaining foes (ironically enough for a lot of the reasons that humans find Orks dangerous), though they don't understand how we can tell who's in charge since, with the obvious exception of the Space Marines, we're all about the same size. This is part of the reason Orks like taking Commissar's caps as trophies, as their distinctiveness, to an Ork, must mean they're a better fighter than the other 'umies. *'Necrons' - Necrons vary from tomb to tomb. Some want your body, some want your skin, some want you dead, and some are just regular dudes who'd rather you just leave them alone. *'T'au' - The T'au see humanity as a tool to achieve the Greater Good (although, they are unique in this setting of trying to get mankind to join them willingly, at first anyway), having no ill will to humans that don't directly oppose them. *'Tyranids' - The Tyranids see humans (and all other races) as just another source of biomass. Tropes Below is a list of the typical tropes for lesser alien races or aliene in general: Aliens are Bastards A central tenet of Imperial philosophy, who are little better. A close examination of all races will leave one with the conclusion that the Imperium's belief is largely accurate, assuming one remembers that humans are aliens to other races: Major Species *'Orks' - The Orks are insane, fight-happy bastards who rampage around the galaxy fighting and killing everything in their way for fun, and they'll kill each other if there's no-one else around. *'Craftworld Aeldari' - Aeldari are cynical manipulative bastards who sacrifice entire civilisations and millions of people to save scant handfuls of their kind, all to avoid the grasp of the Eldritch Abomination created by their ancestors' depravity. *'Drukhari' - The Dark Eldar, psychotic manipulative bastards who feed on the souls and suffering of other sentient beings, launching raiding parties from their inter-dimensional wretched hive to bring back captives and tribute. *'Necrons' - The Necrons, ancient unknowable bastards who either merely want to take "their" planets back from the upstarts squatting on them, or take it even further and desire nothing less than the wholesale extermination of all organic life in the galaxy. *'T'au Empire' - The T'au, arrogant bastards who want to subsume all races into their collectivist ideology, with those who refuse either being sent to re-education camps, forcibly sterilised, or simply declared a "lost cause" and made to disappear. *'Tyranids' - The Tyranids, hungry bastards who want to consume all organic matter in the universe. *'Necrontyr' - The Necrontyr, jealous bastards who despised the Old Ones for being immortal and eventually declared war on a race who never wronged them at all just out of sheer spite. *'C'tan' - The C'tan, gluttonous bastards who fed on the radiation of whole stars and then decided that souls were tastier, so they tricked and enslaved the Necrontyr, turned them into mindless killing machines and set them on the Old Ones. *'Old Ones' - The Old Ones, careless bastards who created the Eldar to be Cannon Fodder in their war against the C'tan and Necrontyr and, when the Eldar weren't enough, unleashed the virulent and hyper-aggressive Orks on the galaxy without any way to control them. Minor Species *'Barghesi' - The Barghesi are considered so ferocious that "hyper-violent" almost always precedes a mention of their name. The only things we know about them are that they have several Space Marine chapters dedicated to fighting them, they live in the Grendel Stars, and judging by the name, they may have something to do with the legendary Barghests of North England, malevolent and gigantic spectral black dogs. *'Enslavers' - The Enslavers are one of the few non-Chaotic warp entities, appear as strange bloated and floating creatures with multiple tentacle limbs. Some images of Enslavers meanwhile show them as resembling giant floating brains. Enslavers will mind control any unprotected psychic being that they can in order to turn them into living Warp portals that more Enslavers can enter the material universe through. The Enslaver Plague led to the downfall of the ancient and highly advanced intelligent species now known only as the Old Ones, invading their last strongholds and psychically enthralling or destroying their psychic guardians and intelligent servant races, and even drove the C'tan Star-Gods into hibernation at the end of the War in Heaven. *'Rak'Gol' - One minor species, the Rak'Gol, are monstrously brutal bastards for little to no known reason, raiding and slaughtering the crews of Imperial ships with no mercy or explanation, and living on planets bombarded by lethal levels of radiation. There's no explanation for why they do what they do, and the Rak'Gol make no attempt to communicate with anyone else. *'Jokaero' - The Jokaero are short, heavy-set, orange-furred xenos who resemble the orangutans of ancient Terra. The race rarely has much of a presence on the tabletop, beyond a single model for Inquisitorial forces, but are much loved by many veteran players. The Jokaero are most commonly shown to be amazing artisans with peerless technical knowledge, creating incredible devices for the Imperium (most famously the powerful digital weapons used by some Inquisitors), yet many xenobiologists believe that they aren't even sapient with everything they create coded directly into their genes. Despite being thought to have nothing more than animal intelligence, the Jokaero have an instinctive understanding of technology. Their prestigious technical abilities coupled with this limited intelligence has led to the Jokaero being barely tolerated by Imperial authorities with a number of more liberal Inquisitors of the Ordo Xenos recruiting the aliens into their retinues to provide them with advanced equipment. They are smart enough to understand Imperial Gothic, but can't speak it. *'Hrud' - The Hrud are creatures with large eyes and exoskeletons. They still retain the aspect of sentient vermin, closely associated with trash and decay. Under a Hrud's tattered clothing they look sort of like several human spines fused to an equally bony torso. They also have in effect by default an entropic field, meaning that anything which comes in contact with them is rapidly aged. *'Saruthi' - The Saruthi have an oblong, flat body suspended by multiple, multi-jointed arms joined at a single point with hands with differing numbers of extremely flexible fingers, overall following no human idea of symmetry. Their head (itself an oblong structure with no eyes or mouth and multiple nostrils placed asymmetrically around the skull) is suspended from the body on a long neck at a random point of the body. Due to a lack of most human senses, they instead sense things through a mixture of smell and taste, allowing them to milk alien geometries for all its worth. *'Thexians' - The Thexians are a biomorphic race mentioned in some 5th Edition background material. The race uses their shapeshifting abilities to influence other species, such as the Loxatl and Nicassar, and are also mentioned as having a horrifying combat form. *'Lacrymole' - The Lacrymole are able to change form at will, using this ability to infiltrate Imperial society and feed on its citizens. *'Umbra' - The Umbra are mysterious, spherical beings that are able to manipulate any shadows in their vicinity, forming blades, fanged maws and crushing tentacles to attack their enemies. *'The Thyrrus' - The Thyrrus are a squid-like race with an unusual approach to warfare, emphasizing spectacle and huge casualties over actually winning the battle. This makes them incredibly difficult to predict, especially since only one or two Inquisitors actually know that's what they're doing. Who the audience is meant to be for these performances is unknown. *'Viskeons' - The Viskeons were a proud warrior race that believed in honorable conflict and so completely disdained ranged weaponry. Eldrad Ulthran subtly steered a splinter of Hive Fleet Kraken away from an Eldar Maiden World toward the Viskeon homeworld. They didn't last a single night. *'Sslyth' - The Sslyth are a race of four-armed alien mercenaries with snake-like bodies. Strong and tough, yet relatively slow-witted and easily manipulated, they are generally found acting as bodyguards for Drukhari Archons. *'Laer' - Ironically, the Sslyth are not the only race of 'snake people' to have appeared in the WH40K universe. During the Great Crusade, the then-loyal Emperor's Children Space Marine legion exterminated the Slaanesh-worshiping Laer, a four-armed snake-like alien race. The Laer practiced extensive bioengineering so that every member of their race was perfectly adapted to their role in society, leading to a number of different types of snake people including winged and aquatic versions. See Also For additional reference, below is a list of various well-written xenos species here on the WH40K Homebrew Wiki that you should check out before starting your own xenos race article. These articles should give you an idea of how a xenos article should be written and formatted and the quality of writing which should be utilised when setting out on such a venture: *'Golmai' *'Techno Dominion' *'Zeraks' Category:Guide Category:Xenos